The tripod of terrorism

Abstract

Violent attacks against innocent civilians occurring on an everyday and global basis have intensified the discourse on terrorism. However, like pornography, terrorism seems readily recognizable but hard to define. The designation is applied to the destructive acts of religious zealots, mentally unstable individuals, terror-inducing despots, separatist militia, and, at times, even legitimate freedom fighters. Ordinary language fails to define terrorism’s nosological circumference and is itself defiled in the process. While acknowledging this denotational conundrum, this paper will propose that the origins of the current mayhem by the radicalized few reside in three geopolitical realms. These include the long shadow of colonialism, the hypocrisy and violence of certain Western foreign policies, and some fundamental problems in the societies that form the crucible of such rage. As a result, ameliorative strategies need to be directed at (and require the collaboration of) all three parties at the root of this tragic and bloody scenario.

Key words:

• terrorism
• rage
• democracy
• annihilation anxiety

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank friends and colleagues who gave useful input on earlier drafts of this paper. They include Drs Muge Alkan, Masood Aslam, Mitchell Cohen, Fayez El-Gabalawi, Gerard Fromm, Jaswant Guzder, Afaf Mahfouz, Shantanu Maitra, Christie Platt, Carl Schieren, Priti Shukla, Ashwini Tambe, and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr.

Notes

1 Arguably, the illegitimate and brutal invasion of Iraq by George W. Bush (1946–present) can also form an example of “‘terrorism from above.”

2 At the same time, all my “etiological” and “therapeutic” proposals are undergirded by psychoanalytic concepts. Without explicitly bringing them up, I will rely heavily upon notions such as the human need for enemies and allies (Freud, 1900; Volkan, 1988), the sacrifice of the individual superego at the altar of group regression (Freud, 1921), the “principle of multiple function” (Waelder, 1936), paranoid and depressive positions (Klein, 1940), narcissistic rage (Kohut, 1972), transgenerational transmission of trauma (Brenner, 2004; Faimberg, 2005; Kestenberg & Brenner, 1996; Kogan, 1995; Krystal, 1968), societal stress-induced retreat into large-group identity (Volkan, 2004, 2014), and so on.

3 Even though the Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna (1906–1949), Qutb acquired far greater prominence as its interlocutor. Author, educator, poet, and Islamist theorist, Qutb is best known for his magnum opus, Fi Zilal al-Quran (In the shade of the Quran), a 30-volume commentary on the holy book, and for his book, Ma’alim Fi al-Tariq (Milestones), a powerful delineation of the sociopolitical role of Islam in the world. The role of Qutb's ideology in inspiring al-Qaeda is discussed later in this essay.

4 The figures mentioned in this and the preceding bullet point are taken from the 2011 Pew Research Center study of Muslims in thirty-nine countries (cited in Lipka, 2017).

5 The short-lasting French campaign in Egypt and Syria (1798–1801) was especially noticeable in this regard.

6 Elsewhere (2016), I have raised three objections to the publication of Charlie Hebdo cartoons of Mohammad: (1) the staff of the paper is all-white, while French Muslims are predominantly African-born, nonwhite individuals; (2) the paper and its readership is mostly the white French majority, while French Muslims are a postcolonial immigrant minority; and (3) France is among the 14 European countries where Holocaust denial is punishable by law; for it to mock the religious feelings of Muslims smacks of unfairness and prejudice.

7 While deficiency in the sense of personal identity and subjective experiences of social marginalization can facilitate attraction to radical ideologies, most research studies (Alderdice, in press; Borum, 2004; Fried, 1982; Sagerman, 2004) do not support the notion of a “terrorism-prone personality” (Atran, 2003); these investigations suggest that there are many different pathways and different psychosocial agendas that lead to vulnerability to committing such violence.

8 One pre-publication reader, of this essay, Dr. Mitchell Cohen, responded to my mention of “disproportionality” with the following statement: “Proportionality of terror/horror is more than body counts. The fact that fewer died in the fall of the Twin Towers vs. the ravaging of Iraq is disproportionate in numbers, but not so much in impact. All victims of the Twin Towers were civilians. The organization, precision, infiltration of flight schools, happening right under American noses, gave the tragedy its impact, along with startling optics. Terrorism likes but does not require large body counts. Terror thrives on optics. The number of people who died in Nazi camps was staggering, but again more chilling were the organization, secrecy, stealth planning and horrific optics” (Cohen, personal communication, April 6, 2017).

9 The most recent example of such bombing “errors” is the March 2017 US airstrike against ISIS in the Iraqi city of Mosul, which led to the deaths of more than 100 civilians (Ryan, 2017).

10 Even within its own confines, the USA seeks only to create “a form of top-down democracy that leaves traditional structures of power – basically corporations and their allies – in effective control. Any form of democracy that leaves the traditional structures essentially unchallenged is admissible. Any form that undermines their power is as intolerable as ever” (President Clinton's National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, paraphrased in Chomsky, 1994, p. 136).

11 Two recent exceptions to such bias are the following. First, the outgoing US Ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, explicitly declared that “Too many attacks on Palestinians lack a vigorous investigation or response by Israeli authorities; too much vigilantism goes unchecked; and at times, there seems to be two standards to the rule of law: one for Israelis and another for Palestinians” (cited in Booth, 2016, p. A-2). The second exception is the USA's December 2016 refusal to veto an UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

12 Awad (2003) traces the roots of Arab anger against the West to Qutb's Islamist ideology but adds the variables of colonialism, the loss of the 1967 war to Israel, American economic sanctions against Iraq, and the continuing presence of US troops and military bases in the Middle East.

13 I recently conducted an informal survey of over 20 Muslims to assess the percentage of believers who observe all the “rules” of Islam. Their answers varied from 5% to 20%, depending upon whether the respondents themselves were liberal or conservative.

14 Compare in this context the 1962 “civilized execution” (i.e., with a proper trial and with physical and legal protection offered to the defendant) of Adolph Eichmann (1906–1962) by Israel, and the 2011 extrajudicial assassination of Osama bin Laden by the USA.

15 Freud (1917) explicitly declared mourning to be a reaction not only to the loss of a loved person but, at times, also to “the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as one's country, liberty, an ideal, and so on” (p. 243).

16 In responding to the terrorist attack in Belgium, Yves Goldstein, the Cabinet Chief to the Brussels Regional President, emphasized the role of conflicted identity in the nation's Muslim youth and asserted that educational and experiential interventions with children from age seven to 12 are essential to prevent their future radicalization (Rubin, 2016).

17 See the US soldiers’ degrading behaviour (e.g. soldiers’ urinating on prisoners, or forcing naked prisoners walk on their hands and knees) towards their captives in Iraq's Abu Gharib prison, for instance.

18 Unfortunately, current political developments in Turkey do not bode well for its sustaining the instruments of democracy, especially a free press.

19 Also pertinent in this context are the writings of Ahmed (1992), Lambert-Hurley and Sharma (2010), Akhtar (2015), Sheikh (2015), Shukla (2015), and Tschalaer (2017).

20 A remarkable example of the friendship-enhancing potential of sports is evident in the American nonprofit agency Soccer for Peace, which organizes soccer camps for Israeli and Palestinian teenagers. Play and peaceful dialogue readily evolves between these customarily contentious parties in such a setting.

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Salman Akhtar

Salman Akhtar, MD, is professor of psychiatry at Jefferson Medical College, and Training and supervising analyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has served on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and Psychoanalytic Quarterly. His 77 books include 17 solo-authored; the most prominent of these are Immigration and identity (1999), Comprehensive dictionary of psychoanalysis (2009), and Psychoanalytic listening (2013). He also has 52 edited books in psychiatry and psychoanalysis to his credit. He has received numerous awards, the most recent being the prestigious Sigourney Award (2012) for outstanding contributions to psychoanalysis. He has also published eight volumes of poetry and is scholar-in-residence at the Inter-Act Theatre Company in Philadelphia.